Well of course you will have to stretch your imagination a little on the boy part, but then of course as I am well into my second childhood, perhaps the ‘boy’ is not exactly wanting.
However, boy or no boy, my job for about one hour a week is to wheel a trolley around a quite large supermarket in the wake of my good wife, who picks her way around shelf after shelf, after shelf.

Of course, this is a non speaking part for me as I am not allowed to make any suggestions, nor am I allowed to make any purchases, except that is the wine, which I greedily purchase for myself anyway.

Despite the fact that I am sleepwalking behind her with a large trolley, she also uses one of the shop’s wire baskets which hangs out of her arm during the complete shopping trip, not fully dependent on me, one might suppose.

There was a time when I was allowed to select the milk, this was at a time when we used one particular brand, but when she who knows all found that it soured too easily, she started to vary the brands and I lost my one and only shopping experience.

On the very odd occasion she would say to me in a very condescending manner, if you see anything you like, dear, help yourself. In the early days I would happily have a look around the shelves and once or twice I picked a certain article that I fancied and put it in the trolley.

However, when we were going through the checkout she would spot the foreign item and, picking it up, she would check the price and exclaim, ah sure that’s too dear, and she would then reject the purchase by leaving the article at the checkout. So much for ‘if you see anything you like, dear’ I don’t bother anymore now, I just wheel the trolley.

During the week leading up to Halloween however, I had a bit of a surprise when she said to me, “go down that aisle over there and get a packet of croquette potatoes,” and I, in shock stuttered, “what brand, what will I look for, do I count the contents or what?” and grabbing me by the elbow, she shook me and loudly whispered “get a bargain you thick.” I got the croquettes and when they were found acceptable I felt that at long last, I had arrived.

Left on my own for a short while I doddered around various shelves in order to gain a few experiences for future assignments and I found myself taking stock of things that I would not normally have noticed in my sleepwalking trolley boy days when I was a non-participating shopper.

The first thing to catch my eye was a tray of ‘Hot Cross Buns’ and in another section I ran into a display of Witches and ‘Halloween Goodies’ and further on again I found ‘Christmas Fare’ and I thought: “what am I shopping for, is it Halloween, Easter or Christmas?” and back I scurried to my lovely shelf-crawling ‘know it all’ wife and happily sleepwalked with my trolley in her wake.